Sunday, October 29, 2017

China high-speed rail graphic of the day

FT reports that China is engaged with 18 high-speed railway projects worth $143 bn across the world. A snapshot is below.

I think that unlike the other sectors like telecommunications, roads, power, and even normal railways, this one is unlikely to take off. It is has less to do with Chinese failings or limitations, but the simple fact that in most of these countries high-speed rail, besides being simply unaffordable is also unlikely to even close to being commercially viable.

Interestingly, none of the Chinese contractors, including the large China Railway Corporation (which alone has debt of $558 bn), were among the eleven companies who won the first round of bids for seven contracts worth £6.6 bn tendered out in the first phase of UK's London to Manchester High Speed Rail (HS2) project. The winning bids were from Costain, Strabag, Skanska, Vinci, Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Eiffage, Kier etc.